Creativity to Enhance Your Garden

GARDENING

By Jane Gates

Signal Staff Writer

You can make do-it-yourself yard art with a little of your own creativity. Yard art is anything that will decorate your landscape. You can use it anyway you want. And if you want to do it yourself, you can make exactly what you want without impacting your landscaping budget.

Decorate your gates, fences, walls or doorways. Add a focal point or point-of-interest into your garden area. Create some whimsy with some humorous signage, or an unexpected creature peaking out of a pond.

Think about places in your yard that can be improved by adding

in the GARDEN

something artistic. Yard art can be in the form of a large or eye-catching event, or it can be subtle like items of décor. Examples of DYI art that create interesting focal points would be sculptures, archways or fountains.

You can build your own fountain by simply adapting a pot or a few well-placed rocks with a submersible pump that recycles water from a tub, up through piping to tumble back over the rocks or out the top of a pebble-filled pot to spill back into the tub.

Recycle old glass bottles as hanging sculptures or turn them upside-down to water potted plants. You can even plant small cactus plants into an old worn-out pair of boots filled with sand and soil.

Stepping stones are ideal for making do-it-yourself yard art. There are acrylic paints now fabricated to last outdoors, and you can paint plain ce-

Use a mosaic step stone or piece of quartz positioned among garden stones. ment squares or rounds with clever sayings, designs or your own illustrations. Consider getting the kids together with friends and have them all paint their own stepping stone creations, then lay the results into a decorative path in your landscape. You can cast your own stepping stones with cement or plaster and make them ornamental by pressing stained glass, sea shells or colored stones into the surface before the stone mixture sets.

There are many ways you can make do-it-yourself yard art. Before throwing out items from your home or garage think about how you could recycle them into something decorative for your garden. Art and décor can take so many different forms. Trash can become precious when repurposed into art. Why waste it? Personalize your landscape to your own tastes. And do it yourself. For free! For more information about gardening in the Santa Clarita Valley, visit Jane Gates on YouTube at youtube. com/user/Janieg8s. 